On March 22, SITEA, the union of food and allied workers, which represents the workers at Nestlé's two plants in Panama, elected a new executive board for the period 2012-2015.

The newly-elected general secretary, Justiniano Buitrago, said the main challenges facing the new board will be monitoring compliance with the new collective agreement signed on 27 January with Nestle Panama SA, strengthening union training for new members and encouraging the conversion of casual workers into permanent.

"These points will be the main thrust of our work. We must ensure that Nestlé respects what they sign with the union and that new members are fully integrated in the organization, so that in future, they have the ability to defend the rights of workers.

"In addition, we will push for negotiations for the company to agree to create permanent jobs for the more than 100 temporary workers currently at Nestlé."

On this point the new general secretary explained that SITEA has succeeded in inserting a clause in the collective agreement, which in fact extends most (80%) of the CBA benefits to casual workers.

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The International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF) is an international federation of trade unions representing workers employed in agriculture and plantations; the preparation and manufacture of food and beverages; hotels, restaurants and catering services; all stages of tobacco processing. The IUF is composed of 427 affiliated trade unions in 127 countries representing over 10 million workers.